Autonomous replication of a wheat DNA sequence in isolated wheat nuclei

A fragment of wheat nuclear DNA was shown to be able to replicate autonomously in wheat nuclei. The fragment was 637-bp long and contained telomeric repeats at both termini. Its replication was manifested by the appearance of a radioactive reaction product of the same approximate size. Further analyses showed that the linear, double-stranded reaction product was labelled along its entire length and contained the same number of similarly located HaeIII sites as did the fragment tested. Prokaryotic DNA remained unlabelled under the same assay conditions.